East Coast Challenges: Buying Furniture

One of the challenges to life in the Maritimes of Canada is furniture purchases.

I have mentioned this to my Upper Canadian friends and they scoff and, by their silence or pursed lips, seem to suggest I am lazy and or dim, which is their general impression of east coasters in any case.

‘Just go to a second hand shop’ they say. Oh, I go to second hand shops. The Thrift store in our local university town has a constant circulation of stinky old furniture with the occasional sound dresser or desk, and those get SOLD stickers plastered on them as soon as they hit the store floor.

If you are desperate for a dresser you have two other choices, over priced ‘anitique’ shops or the press board shit furniture from Big Box Stores. Quite honestly I think that antique hunters raid the second hand stores and truck the stuff back to Ontario or into the States. It is hard to find that unexpected gem among the crap.

In our peripatetic life we have left furniture behind in our many moves, never using a truck. And without generous relatives we have needed to find kitchen tables, couches and beds.

Sometimes we have used the ‘hunting’ approach. Locating the couch or bed, we would circle around it and then drag it home. In search of a futon couch it was necessary to go Moncton, accept the inevitable terrible service and buy a full priced item of questionable value.

In comparison to the big ‘hunt’ style of furniture acquisition is the womanly style of ‘gathering’. ‘Gathering’ is a necessary strategy out here in the east, a survival technique for the barren grounds of the Maritimes, where the couches no longer roam free.

I prowl and scavenge for furniture. My eye is always peeled. This means that whenever I am out, in any capacity, in any place, I am thinking about lugging home a piece of furniture. Garage sales? Plant stands? Wooden chairs?

If I am visiting my Mother in Toronto I just have to close my eyes to opportunity as I know I cannot ship it back home. But if I am wandering in the local environment of Tantramar I will keep an eye out at all times.

It might be an old English armoir obviously created for small rooms, or a wooden desk, or god forbid, a red velvet couch. I am always looking for a red velvet couch. All my life I have been looking for a red, or even better, a dark green velvet couch.

My husband will accuse me of being an impulsive shopper but in this accusation is no understanding of the ‘gathering’ style of hunting. ‘Gathering’ ebbs and flows and never ends. ‘Gathering’ involves negotiations and machinations, begging for trucks, shuffling of furniture, and a long term view.

So it is the opposite of impulsive, it is gradual,consistent and thoughtful.

And that is the state of mind I was in when I bought a red velvet antique couch while attending the opening of a museum in a historical house. They wanted to get rid of the couch, they promised delivery. It was a good looking red velvet couch and even ugly couches cost more. So I put the money down.

Complications arose that caused me a sleepless hour or so in the middle of the night; Joe was aghast, there was no where to put the new couch because the new room, where I will shuffle the old futon couch, is not finished. But my mind held the vision of the red velvet couch sitting in my newly painted study, and I held on to that picture in my mind.

I started my negotiations with the minutiae of life. If I got rid of the old piano I had bought in a fit of chagrin when my Mom told me I could not have the old family piano, then I could put the couch there until the back of the house was finished.

I put an ad up in kijiji for a free piano and then held my breath a bit and within a week a very nice man drove up to the house and practically singlehandedly shoved the very old, worn and massive piano into his equally massive truck and drove away with a big smile.

I was honest to a point with the man on the age of that piano and how it was good for kids to learn how to play. I had, in fact, had it looked at and it was so old you could only tune it so far. I know the family piano will make its way out to me some day so I will wait for it while Frank practices on an electric piano (just not the same at all).

One step closer to a new couch. We are many months away from that couch being in my newly painted study. But it will happen eventually. I know that with sure conviction because I have seen myself make things happen before.

Children have been born and houses have been bought and all on the wings of planning, patience, striking when the iron is hot, and the skillful art of negotiation. And underneath this ‘gathering’ and nurturing mentality, I have a a belief in myself and my path before me that makes things happen.

I am swimming in the waters of life, head above the surface, gentle calm breathing, eye on the the shore. Sometimes I hunt and sometimes I gather. What, was that a rocking chair on the side of road, stop, back up, we are taking that home.